HOW IT ALL STARTED

1 January 2014

Welcome to VKV Visuals. With the beginning of 2014 I thought it would be a good time to start my Journal, centered around everything I love in Interiors and Architecture and share it with all of you out there. As a 3D Artist creating visuals for interior designers and architects, I feel that I must be on top of the latest trends in design. Besides, I love reading up on all the top-designers and their latest projects, be it interior, furniture-design, landscaping or architecture.

As you can read in my Bio, I have done several projects renovating old houses. But the first project actually designing and building a new house was in the little village of Franschhoek, in the middle of the beautiful winelands of South Africa. My husband and I bought an old vineyard named Happy Valley (can you think of a name more fitting?) , bordering a little river, bare of everything but lots of old vines which turned out to be absolutely non-productive… No electricity, no water, no WiFi…. Nevertheless, we gave it a shot and started ploughing the fields, digging for boreholes and bribing the local electricity man to get us connected to the grid. It was then that I bought my very first 3D software package to design our house. These first steps into 3D designing and visualising our new house were the seed of my current activities within VKV Visuals. After 9 months of hard work our new “Gentleman’s Farmhouse” was a reality. And here is an impression of the final result of our African Dream where we lived with our two children for 4 happy years:

How it all started – the building crew hard at work

Of course there will be a snake in our Garden of Eden….

Welcome to Happy Valley

Front of the house, with the 27 metre wide verandah, or “stoep” as they say in South Africa

Back of the house, you can see some of the vines that survived the plough

The entrance with our old Landie

Look at those beautiful roses!

Back of the house, with the lawn sloping toward the river…

and the pool

Our two sweet and loyal canine companions, Balou & Bomba

The “stoep” with the “braai” or bbq

The entrance

and the livingroom

The Kitchen

One of the bathrooms

Some details…

and some more details

One final look

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Welcome to my blog. As a 3D Artist from Amsterdam, Holland, specialising in visuals for high-end interior design projects, I created this journal where I share all my research, thoughts and ideas on international Interior Design, Design Icons, Trends and Architecture. Please drop me a line if you have any (positive) comments or other input. Enjoy!